I will be off the grid for the next 5 days to go under the Atlantic Ocean in an Ohio Class Nuclear Submarine. We are doing pick-ups on the Navy Seal film in Key West. So, please give me a few days to catch up on questions when I surface!
The Elite Team and I are shooting a SEAL op that starts with 2 little zodiacs barreling across the open ocean, when all of a sudden a Nuclear Sub breeches in front of them. The zodiacs surf the swell and land onto the sub, 2 SEALS deploy and head down the hatch. We are shooting this with a helmet cam, 4 cameras on boat to boat, a camera in a helicopter and then 2 cameras on the Sub once it breeches.
Then we go in the Sub and shoot 3 sequences of the film while the Navy goes through their op schedule. We will be shooting a briefing in the CON and a walk and talk sequence that travels through the ICBM missile silo tubes. Then, we will be filming the SEALS doing their recon mission where they get deployed out of the Nuclear Sub in a mini Sub called an SDV (SEAL Delivery Vehicle) with 3 underwater cameras and piecing together a sequence where the 2 SEALS suit up, head into the Nuclear Silo, they flood the tube with water, they swim four stories up to the DDS, (Dry Deck Shelter) where the mini Sub awaits.
They open up the huge door that reveals the ocean, the mini Sub slides out on rails and the two SEALS take off on the mini sub. Their mission is to gain intel on a meeting between two bad guys on a dry lake bed on the Horn of Africa. Once they get their info, they head back to the mini Sub and then to the Nuclear Sub where the mission ends.
I have just purchased 2 1D mark IV cameras and will be using the clean high ISO range of this new camera to capture the beautiful available light that exist in a Ohio Class Nuclear sub on a night mission op. We are bringing minimal lighting and a very small camera package with a crew of 5. One Director, one Cinematographer, one A.C., one sound mixer, and a gaffer.
In four words: Small footprint, Big Vision.
Tags: Cinematography, HDSLR Cameras
Shane 
This entry was posted
on Friday, January 8th, 2010 at 2:38 am and is filed under Cinematography, HDSLR Cameras.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Responsible Filmmaking
Camera Stabilization
The Power of Focus
Filtration: Beware Of The Reaper Of Cheap Glass
Still Lenses That Can Grace The Big Screen
Cinema Style Lenses
John Guerra,Elite Team Member: Lighting On The Sub
HurlBlog Sound Guru: Gene Martin
The Sub Shoot
Wow! Sounds like an exciting shoot. I can’t believe the projects you guys are able to undertake with such a small crew. Good luck. Can’t wait to see the film.
Incredible to think you have a nuclear sub as a set! I expect though that however unusual the situation, the submariners you will be working with will be very quick studies, being dedicated, intelligent and proffesional, also used to working as a team 24/7. I wonder how many Gigabytes of Video you will come back with, the thought is kind of scary to me, not only the fact of its quantity, but the job of taking it from raw MOV files and editing it into final cuts (so to speak)! Best of Luck, and have a great time
Hi Shane, sorry to bother you with this comment (at the wrong place), I just could not find any email address in this blog. I am a bit confused as I am not sure if I am getting old and my memory starts to fool me… I am pretty sure, that just recently you had a very interesting blog entry about the rolling shutter effect in Canon cameras and the influence of the CF card on this. You recommended a certain series of Sandisk to avoid rolling shutter. As I am about to buy new cards I wanted to make sure again to choose the right ones. Just that I don’t find the entry any more. Could you once again give a short resume? Thanks for your support in advance. Best regards, David
David, the blog you were referring to was one that had mis-information in it, that is why I pulled it. I want to bring you the best, up to date information possible and that was not. I apologize for that. On the flash card front all the testing that I have done found that the Extreme IV UDMA 45 MB/s or Extreme UDMA 60 MB/s give you a little better compression profile, they do not help with the rolling shutter issues that the camera has.
Peter, thank you so much. It was an incredible experience. We shot 25 16GB flash cards with all the underwater work as well as the interiors in the Sub.
Nick Keating, It was incredible boarding the sub with 40 some cases and 5 crew members. I loved it. It is how it use to be. You were filmmakers. Every one pitched in and had a stake in the final project. This is how the Bandito Brothers roll. We hope to have a trailer soon. Thanks
Shane,
GREAT stuff. The blog looks great. Great content. The SEAL job looks like another impressive film. Pretty amazing location(s). Hope to talk to you soon.
- Gary H.
Shane, I am amazed at your work and am considering entering the Beyond The Still Contest that Canon has going on right now. I have a quick side question though….What do you do to combat rolling shutter? I feel limited on things that are possible with my 7D due to the rolling shutter problems, which is a bummer due to the vast flexibility that these cameras have otherwise (as you vividly demonstrated during the Collision Conference Video, haha) I am using the fastest Kingston Cards available (Ultimate Edition 266x). I know that you have recently said that card speeds actually don’t have an effect on rolling shutter so….. Any ideas?
Neil Holloman, I get asked this question way too much. I address it always the same way. What rolling shutter issue? If have shot the equivalent of 1.8 million feet of film on this Navy SEAL project with big action, pans, swishes, handheld crack addicted type camera work and have not had an issue. Maybe it is the Twixtor logarithm we put it through that helps. The only issue I have had with the rolling shutter was shooting blank gun fire in my face with muzzle flashes that blew me back. The flashes would expose only one-third of the frame and the rest was a black band, like a TV screen that was not in sync.
Gary Hurlbut, thanks so much, I am glad you liked it.
Thanks Shane.
Neil Holloman, you are very welcome.
Great stuff.
in the AC article, you wrote about using grains from a grey shot to overlay the footage which you used. I am curious to how you did it. Could you please show us how this was done?
Charles lim, I will see if the Navy will release that stuff. If not I will see if I can use this effect on some other footage that I have shot for all of you to examine.